


When the Pain Cuts Through

by 9091



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s07e15 Repo Man, Flashbacks, Gen, Hurt!Sam, Protective Dean Winchester, Weechesters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-04
Updated: 2012-07-04
Packaged: 2017-11-09 03:44:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/450874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/9091/pseuds/9091
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“What if they separate us?  They were talking about sending me to live with some family that takes in kids.  Dean —”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Never gonna happen,” Dean said firmly.  “We separate when I say we do.”</i>
</p><p>Set after 7.15 "Repo Man", with references to 5.11 "Sam, Interrupted."</p>
            </blockquote>





	When the Pain Cuts Through

_**Then.** _

“You have got to be kiddin’ me,” Dean yelled into the phone he’d found in the empty, unguarded office down the hall.  “Have you seen these places?  Just leave and get over here.”

Dad’s voice came through loud and clear.  Dean had the same spinal reflex to it he always did.  “I’m not leaving this hunt, Dean.  It’ll only be a few more days.”

“What am I supposed to do?” His voice came out higher than he wanted, not like the person he thought he was at all.  “They’ve got Sam.”

“You go in there and you play it like the grown-ups want you to play it, Dean.  Give ‘em the answer they’re angling for, act lost when you don’t wanna answer and get the two of you out of there when you see your first chance.  Like you’d play anything else.”  

Whenever Dad told Dean something, it always sounded like he’d said it a hundred times before, even when he hadn’t.  Must’ve been some conversation Dad had in his head with himself, or with someone else.  Sure as hell not Dean.

It was an annoying habit, but he was right.

 _Act lost._   Dean laughed into the dial tone.  Sure, no fucking problem.

 

_**Now.** _

“You have got to be kiddin’ me,” Dean growled.  The sharp edge of his voice was amplified by the phone booth.  “This place looks like Arkham Asylum.”

He listened to what Frank told him without really hearing.  He knew Frank had a point, but he didn’t have to like it.

Dean looked behind him again.  It did look like Arkham.  At least Glenwood Springs had the decency to look like… well, like a mental institution.  Hospital sterile and whatever the ugliest off-green paint was that the United Mental Institution Decor Association, or whoever the fuck decided these things, had signed off on.  But the place Frank sent him, which was so hush-hush that it didn’t even have a name, was a concrete box with bars on the windows.  

Looked like the kind of place they scoped out when they were laying low.  Looked like the kind of place where they’d hide dead, former demon vessels because he and Sam saw these places — these empty, burned out places — and got the feeling that other people just didn’t.  Hell, very few of those bodies were ever found, so maybe it was true.

At the thought of Sam, walking alongside him, carrying the body by the ankles that Dean was carrying by the arms, Dean turned toward the car.

Sam was currently filling up the back of a Dodge Dart that idled nearby.  It was idling because Dean was afraid to turn off the ignition.  All he could see in the yellow half-light was the outline of Sam’s shoulders against the window where he was propped up.  The last of Dean’s painkillers and muscle relaxers wasn’t going to hold out much longer.

Frank was telling Dean to focus.  So Dean focused.  Without another word, he hung up.

 

_**Then.** _

Child Services had busted into their motel room in the middle of the night with a bunch of uniforms.  It was their mistake.  Dean had woken up instantly, hand already on the grip of the gun under the pillow, and shot the closest officer in the leg.  If the other officer hadn’t gotten the jump on him, if he hadn’t let himself sleep so sound that night, he would’ve shot them all, just like he’d played it in his head a million times before.

But it was all pointless now.  Now they were in a detention center, and Dean had changed their location so many times now that he couldn’t remember what city they were in.  He thought it was Detroit.  Smelled like Detroit.

Sam was almost thirteen and sitting as close to Dean as he could on the hard chairs.  Three years before, he would’ve been glued to Dean’s side, Dean’s arm tight around him.  But things had changed and sometimes Sam was pissed at everyone, maybe including Dean, so now he just sat close kind of accidentally and Dean let him.  Dean wanted to lock his arm around him but he didn’t.  Sam would make a face.  Dean scratched his arm inside the sleeve of his jacket, just looking at Sam, wondering why kids had to grow up at all.  It sucked.

When they wanted to take Sam back and not him, Dean stood up and Sam stayed down.  Dean said just heard himself say no.  He didn’t hear anything else except the high-alarm inside his own head.  They were talking about taking the two of them separately, but when they started talking about letting them go back there together, Dean started hearing parts of what they had to say.  The police weren’t going to press charges,  since Dean obviously meant no harm.

 _Meant no harm?_   Dean just stared at them.  Of course he meant harm, that's what guns were for.  Fucking morons.

You’re 17, they were telling him, and Dean realized that he hadn’t made a note of 17 at all.  What month was it?  February?  Oh, right.

Then they were talking about how he was still a minor but no one would want to take him.  Take him where?  Dean was still trying to calm down enough to listen to more than a few words at a time.    


No, they wouldn’t take Dean, Dean would go on to some other place.  Group home, they said.  Work farm, they said.  Until he turned 18.  But something about social services, something about case officers.  

There were uniformed guys standing around now.  They were in scrubs but obviously not doctors.  Dean’s eyes flicked over to them, sizing them up.  He wasn’t even saying anything, and they were bringing in muscle.

When they hauled Sam up and took him into another room, Dean suddenly knew why.  

As the gulf between him and Sam went wide, Dean started punching.  Started connecting knees and knuckles with whatever felt like meat.  

They really should’ve had those chairs bolted down.

 

_**Now.** _

Glenwood Springs had some paperwork on a clipboard, about twenty pages of it.  Enough to make it where Dean had to go back two or three pages to make sure his lies were consistent.  At least Frank’s place didn’t have that.  What it had was someone with a gun at the door, and one of those metal plates that slid across an opening, like Dean was trying to get in to visit Hannibal Lecter or something.

The person on the other side flicked dark eyes from him to Sam as Dean huffed under Sam’s weight, marching them both up to the door.

“Are you the one I give the first phrase to?”

No answer.

“Ginger sling with a pineapple heart,” Dean recited, feeling stupid.

The slat closed and locks were being undone.  A short, stocky guy with a machine gun looked at Dean and Sam, then looked around and behind them.  With a nod that Dean almost missed in the dark, he let them in and locked the door behind them.  Machine Gun was the first thing to smell sterile, but not in the way that set Dean at ease.  In the way that told Dean that their Borax tip had been spread on the wire, and that this guy had been regularly doused with it.  Just part of the job.

He and Sam were patted down.  The guy took his box-cutters, his lighters, his knives and his gun, and then the hidden knife and the other gun.  Then he patted down the knife and gun that Dean had hidden on Sam. 

They were taken up to another set of doors.  Machine Gun stood behind them.  Dean didn’t have to look back to know the gun was leveled on both of them.

A single light hummed on above them and Dean jumped as his eyes adjusted.  Sam’s head rolled into his as the next slat opened.  

“Cool cherry cream, nice apple tart,” Dean said sarcastically.  When all this was over, he and Frank were gonna have an abrupt conversation about security phrases and what made good ones.

Machine Gun pushed himself between them and the door and gave his own phrase.  Dean couldn’t hear it.

With that, the next door opened and Dean jumped at a hand coming toward him followed by a sharp sensation in his neck.  The guy behind the door hadn’t wasted a moment, and under any other circumstances, without the fear of dropping Sam, Dean would’ve laid him out on the floor and put a boot in his face in three seconds. 

Needles dropped Dean’s blood into a glass jar of liquid, screwed the lid on and shook it before holding it up to the light.  Needles and Machine Gun nodded at each other and it was on to the last door.  


Machine Gun and Needles now each gave their own phrase and shifted apart to let Dean drag Sam up. 

“Coconut fudge really blows down those blues.”

And they were in.

 

_**Then.** _

After he made the phone call, he found a janitor’s closet and he waited.  He found a set of coveralls inside and put them on over his clothes, knowing the trick wouldn’t hold up to anyone who was close.  He grabbed a clipboard off a shelf and stuck some papers on it.  One thing he’d learned was that a uniform and a clipboard would open almost any door.  

He tracked back to where he’d lost the guards until he saw some kids Sam’s age being walked down a hall through a door.  In the seconds the door was opened, he saw Sam sitting right in the sightline, right where he was supposed to be.  Dean allowed himself to smile.  _Good work, Sammy._

Dean walked back over to the desk to find something solid to throw.  He lucked into the drawer where they kept all the things the kids had come in with until they logged it or locked it up, Dean’s stuff included.  He unzipped the cover-alls to push his knife, his lock pick sets and his box-cutters back into his jeans.  Rooting around, he found a baseball.  


Looking around the corner at the closed door, Dean waited a moment, baseball in hand.  He drew his arm back as much as he could and let the baseball fly hard at the door.

Within a few seconds, someone else had opened it as soon as Dean disappeared around the corner.  “Who threw that?”

“Roger Clemens,” Dean called out, like it was a joke.  Just some asshole in the hall, being funny.  Nothing to worry about.

As the guy snorted in annoyance, Dean heard Sam pipe up that he needed to go to the bathroom, in just the voice that grown-ups hated to hear kids use.  Dean held his breath and waited, counting it out, listening to how close the steps got, listening and appreciating how Sam was obviously lagging a few steps back.

That’s ‘cause Sam knew what was coming.

Dean took the guy out with an elbow to the windpipe.

 

_**Now.** _

The next room looked more like a prison during visiting hours than any hospital Dean had ever seen.  The guy doing the admitting was even inside a bulletproof glass case with some kind of wire reinforcement around it, a little door in front for papers.  Machine Gun and Needles were trying to pull Sam away from him, and the pressure gauge in Dean’s brain was calculating which of them he’d take out first.

Sam lifted his head enough to fix blurry eyes on him and blinked.  “Dean… where?”

“S’okay, Sammy.  I got this.  Put your head down.”

Sam put his head back down against Dean’s.  Dean hitched his arm tighter around him.

Fuck this.  Dean was gonna take them all out, even if meant putting Sam down for just a few seconds.

“This the Winchesters?” called out the guy inside the glass, cutting through Dean’s plan.

“Sam and Dean,” Needles answered.

“I got this,” said Caged Desk, slinging some keys off a hook and disappearing.  After a minute, he walked out in front of them.  

He sized them up.  Dude looked like he could hold his own.  He waved his hand at Machine Gun and Needles, an act of good faith.  Dean’s eyes narrowed, not buying it.  He was ready.

“This isn’t procedure,” the man told him, obviously not happy about it.  “But Devereaux said it was in our, uh, best interests that you go back together or you don’t go at all. I can't afford to lose any men."

Dean smirked, teeth clenched behind it, and tightened his hold on Sam.  So there was some sanity in the asylum after all.  Who knew?

 

_**Then.** _

Now they were both in the janitor’s closet.  Dean had broken off a broom handle and waited behind the door, knife in the hand behind him, Sam as far back against the wall as Dean could get him.  
He was waiting for the noise in the hall to die down.  If Dean was out there trying to find out who took down one of his men, he’d’ve searched the closet already.  He would’ve found them by now.   

Usually, he wished the so-called good guys were better at their jobs, but he’d take whatever he could get today.

He heard Sam stand up quietly.

“Stay _down_ , Sam,” Dean muttered, wishing he could shout. 

“Dean, don’t make fun of me, but…” 

Dean turned away from the door for just a second, “About what?”

“I’m scared,” he admitted.  

In a million years, as many times as he poked Sam, he wouldn’t have dreamed of making fun of him at a time like this.  Didn’t Sammy know?  Maybe not.  “I know.  It’s gonna be okay.”

“What if they separate us?  They were talking about sending me to live with some family that takes in kids.  Dean —”

“Never gonna happen,” Dean said firmly.  “We separate when I say we do.”

Sam walked up behind him and Dean didn’t stop him.  So long as Sam was behind him, that was alright.  He felt Sam’s fingers wrap around his wrist.  Dean took the knife out with the other hand, and Sam’s fingers tangled tightly with his.

 

_**Now.** _

It was an hour or more before Sam regained consciousness, just a little.  Dean had inspected what they were giving him.  It was just routine tranquilizers for now, until they figured out what to do.

Sam turned and looked at Dean.  His words came out slow and fuzzy.  “You really here?”

“Really here.”

“Really you?”

Dean slid the chair he was straddling across the floor to be closer.  “Really me, Sammy.  Do you see _him_?”

Sam tried to focus around Dean, but couldn’t.  “Can’t see anything.  Just see you.”

“Good.”  Dean wouldn’t point out that Satan could’ve been him, could’ve looked like Dean, like before.  That wasn’t helpful.

“Dean…” Sam said, and then didn’t talk for a long time, like he was lost.  “Dean, I want —”

“What?  Whaddaya want?”

“No, you’ll just make fun of me.”

Dean shook his head, trying to smile.  “No, you say what you want, you get it.  I’m your one-man Make-a-Wish Foundation.”

Sam blinked and squinted at him.  “That’s for kids who are dying, Dean.”

Dean winced, cursing under his breath.  “Fine, bad joke.  But ask for what you want, man.”

The words came out braced, with a half-laugh, like he felt ridiculous.  “Could you hold onto my hand?” 

“What, for the scar?”  Dean took Sam’s hand, with the little monitor attached to his index finger and the sensors taped to the back, wrapping his fingers around and pressing his thumb into Sam’s palm.

And maybe they both thought it at the same time.  

_Yeah, sure.  For the scar._


End file.
